Meanwhile, China hasn't formulated its response because bureaucrats are awaiting the return home of President Xi Jinping, according to three officials who were briefed but declined to be named as the matter isn't public. The confusion was exacerbated by the absence of a joint statement from the USA and China following the dinner. The fact that China made no mention of agriculture in its statement after the meeting may also increase trader concerns over whether these purchases will materialize.

"When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so", he said. "It will always be the best way to max out our economic power", he said on Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on CNBC the U.S. and Chinese had "very specific discussions" in Buenos Aires Saturday evening on steps to defuse their conflict, which involves hundreds of billions in bilateral trade and had roiled world markets for months.

Since a great deal of social media simply cannot look away from these tweets, you can guess what happened next.

Kudlow also said the goal was to eliminate all tariffs on any imports, which is a departure from what Trump wrote on Tuesday in a Twitter post, when he said he was a "tariff man".

President Donald Trump's advisers are scrambling to explain a trade deal he claimed he'd struck with China to reduce tariffs on US cars exported to the country-an agreement that doesn't exist on paper and still hasn't been confirmed in Beijing. At the end of the day, two realities remain: the U.S.is now an energy (oil and gas) producing super power alongside the ranks of Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia, while China, conversely, is the world's largest energy consumer, which gives it less leverage in ongoing trade and even geopolitical negotiations and developments.

That approach so far has amounted to slapping tariffs on US$250 billion (NZ$361 billion) of Chinese imports and vowing to impose penalties on all other imports if China doesn't make changes.

Late Sunday, Trump tweeted that "China has agreed to reduce and remove tariffs on cars coming into China from the U.S. now the tariff is 40 percent".

"It doesn't seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump's tweets (which seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated) with reality", JPMorgan Chase said in a trading note. Washington, but not Beijing, has also said China will cut import tariffs on American cars. Per the president's post, a delegation of USA officials will hold negotiations with the Chinese side.

"The negotiations with China have already started".

Trump and Xi on Saturday agreed to the cease-fire in a trade war that has seen the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods between the world's two largest economies disrupted by tariffs.

White House trade director Peter Navarro detailed on Monday what the administration hopes to accomplish by lifting tariffs on China for 90 days.

"There was a significant commitment from both leaders on what needs to be done over the 90 days and instructions to both teams to negotiate and turn this into a real agreement with specific action items, deliverables and time frames", Mnuchin said.

"Historically, the Chinese have tried to respect the WTO obligations, which are plain and simple decided in a case against them", he said. We make the finest and cleanest product in the World, and that is what China wants.